My missus' erratic behaviour, not sure what to do.

[Lenovoschmenovo]

Hi, I'm a chap. Difficult to write this down after so long, so here are some garbled attempts.
My missus, not married, of two decades behaves extremely erratically. Can be very verbally abusive. Cannot deal with even fairly mild stress, takes offence easily. I think she suffers from anxiety/depression, comes from a highly toxic emotionally abusive family who made her and two siblings lie about the parents' relationship to outside world/grandparents, for years.
She is obsessed to distraction by work, it is the main thing in her life apart from our 8 year old boy. She's a good Mum, but never tells our boy she loves him. It's unnecessary.
Increasingly I think she is autistic to some degree.
She can be incredibly abusive and obsessive that she has been wronged. Cunt fat cunt dick bastard wanker etc etc etc. I'm not that fat ;) So many tens of times, even once after I had serious surgery she chased me down the stairs the day after, screaming abuse at me for saying she hadn't watered the plants. She always excuses her outbursts/other mistakes. It has all got much worse after her Dad died young at 61.
If we didn't have a son I would have left her long ago but it would break my sons heart, and he's a lovely boy. Even better we live outside the UK so no support network.
I'm a solvent, fairly smart, working guy, earn decent dough. I'm not an idiot. But I don't know how to make things work out. She needs some kind of help but I don't know how to get her there...

You could be describing my own mother: emotionally unstable, narcissistic, has never ever told me she loves me. Our relationship has been awful for a long time - and my relationship with my dad is also poor because I’m so angry that he never stood up for me or took my brother and I away for it.

“His relationship with his mum should be poor if she is unstable, inconsistent and abusive. Unfortunately most children of parents who are like that spend decades feeling they are not good enough and they just need to try harder, be better and this will get their abusive parent to love them in the way they need rather than recognising that it is the parent who has deficiencies.” - this, x1000

I’m so glad your little boy has you in his corner and that you’re going to take action.

One thing I would say - if my dad had left and if by some miracle we’d ended up living with him (early 80s so imagine mother usually got custody), I’m sure my mum would have taken her anger out on me when she saw us. If you do end up leaving and she’s not having therapy, I’d be concerned that she’d become even more emotionally unstable, which would obviously affect your son when he’s with her.

I wish you lots of luck - you sound very patient and like a very good dad.

You would like to think that your son is happy but he knows that things at home between mum and dad are not great at all. Is this really what you between you want to teach your son about relationships, does he not warrant a more healthy set of lessons?.

If it was not for your son would you and she still be together?. Probably not. Do not stay for the sake of the child, it rarely if ever works out well and he won't thank you for doing that to him.

I also wouldn’t put much stock in his relationship with her seeming fine and him seeming ok at the moment.

When you are a child you usually see the whole world through the frame of reference your FOO has given you. It can take decades to understand that your childhood/parents were not normal and the things that happened have damaged you.

This is really what I mean about ‘he should have a poor relationship with his mum’... is it rational/healthy for him to be happy and content with a parent who feels telling him he is loved is unnecessary?!

he is going to have to work out his relationship with his mother himself, what he doesnt need is you normalising it.
he needs you to have a stable base for him. at the moment, he hasnt got this.
Agree with Atilla. staying for the sake of the children never works. and he will not thank you for it.
and you can't fake it.

Yes I get your points. Thanks again. I'll try and action a lot of this as quick as I can.